A Mapuche white metal straw for drinking yerba mate, with a pierced shell-shaped head and a plain stem with raised bands engraved at intervals.

This is a traditional example of silverwork made by the Mapuche people of southern and central Chile. Their extensive silversmithing tradition began in the eighteenth century when Spanish colonists introduced silver coins which they traded for Mapuche cattle. The Mapuche melted these coins down and converted them into jewellery and other items, combining local knowledge of metal sheetwork with small-scale smelting techniques learnt from the Spanish.